AMD FirePro M8900 vs AMD FirePro M4100

AMD FirePro M8900

The AMD FirePro M8900 is a high-end graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the same chip as the Radeon HD 6970M (Blackcomb XT) and therefore offers UVD3 decoding and slightly improved Tessellation performance compared to cards found in the previous generation (e.g., Radeon 6800 series).

Compared to the Radeon consumer line, the FirePro offers certified drivers for professional 3D applications. Due to optimizations and some unlocked features, the performance when running professional applications is highly improved.

The 960 Stream processors should be still based on the "old" 5D architecture, similar to the 5000 series. Due to the different architecture of the FirePro M8900, however, the core count cannot be directly compared to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. With the later two, the cores can also be used for general computations like transcoding videos.

The theoretical performance of the FirePro M8900 is similar to the consumer counterpart, the Radeon HD 6970M. However, due to the specialized professional drivers, games may run a bit slower. The 6970M is able to run modern games in high settings and resolutions fluently (see benchmarks on the HD 6970M page).

The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

AMD FirePro M4100

The AMD FirePro M4100 is a middle-class graphics card for mobile workstations, which has been presented in mid-2013. Similar to the Nvidia Quadro series, the FirePro cards offer certified drivers for professional 3D-software like CAD. Due to optimizations and some unlocked features, the performance in these applications is much better compared to a consumer Radeon GPU.

Architecture

The FirePro M4100 integrates 6 Compute Units based on the GCN architecture. Overall, the Mars chip has 384 stream processors, 24 TMUs and 8 ROPs. The memory of up to 2 GB GDDR5 is connected via an 128-bit interface. Just like the Radeon series, the FirePro M4100 offers features like Enduro or PCIe 3.0, but no Eyefinity.

Performance

According to the clock rates of up to 670 MHz for the chip and 1000 MHz for the memory (4000 MHz effective, 64 GB/s), the 3D gaming performance is slightly below the older FirePro M4000 or the Nvidia Quadro K1100M. Recent Games of 2013 can thus be played fluently in medium details and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Power Consumption

The FirePro M4100 features different energy saving techniques to reduce power consumption and prolong battery life. These include PowerPlay and PowerTune (for clocking the GPU), Zero Core (deactivates parts of the GPU when the display is off) and Enduro (dynamic GPU switching between the processor graphics and the dedicated Radeon GPU). The maximum power consumption under full load should be around 30 watts (estimate), making the card suitable for laptops 15 inches in size or greater.